The Sue Gray Report tells us nothing new about Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but it will tell you everything you need to know about your own MP

Tom - who was full of admiration for Sue Gray, it should be said - told me: "Mark my words, the Sue Gray report will tell us nothing about the Prime Minister. We have known for some time the mettle of the man. We know who he is and have become all too familiar with his modus operandi."

He doubled down: "When the Sue Gray report comes it will tell us nothing we don't know about Boris Johnson, however, it will help us to get to know better the people entrusted by good, honest folk with their votes - the Tory MPs who surround him."

Tom, the most astute of politics watchers in the media, full stop, was adamant: "Once we know the full picture, should it be as damning as we think it might be [and it is] then what they do - or don't do - will tell us who they are and reveal something about their own moral standards that voters will see, too. That is a moment where the public will see who represents them, and be able to measure up whether or not they reflect their own values."

He was right: drunken parties where people indulged themselves to such an extent that they vomited back up the exploits of their selfishness - altercations are known to have broken out - at a time when the nation was sacrificing so much is damning.

When I saw him raising a tumbler of his tipple to a room thronging with revellers, clearly surrounded by bottles of booze on 13th November 2020 it compelled me to go back to the ONS to check the context of the moment:

In that week 12,254 people died - 442 more than the week prior and almost 2,000 deaths more than the national five-year average;

2,466 of those deaths were coronavirus related;

Of the 2,466 deaths that were Covid-19 related, 2,170 of those human beings were killed by Covid-19 itself - it being cited as the underlying cause of death.*Source: Office of National Statistics

Two things, I think, are important against that backdrop:

First and foremost - and the Downing Street beano goers knew this better than anyone - Covid-19 was a highly dangerous virus with the capacity to kill en masse, making these gathering a reckless endangerment to life. The conclusion? That they simply didn't care.

But also - and I am sorry to put it quite like this because as someone who lost an aunt to the virus I know all too well how difficult this is - this all happened against a backdrop of loss of life on an industrial scale.

The nation's liberties had been revoked by the Prime Minister, with that revocation enforced by threat of arrest and punishment, and yet Mr Johnson had clearly decided that it would be one rule for us, and no rules for him.

None of this is political: my mantra for work undertaken by those working for The Yorkshire Post under my editorship is that we steer our journalism not by right v left but by right v wrong.

We judge those in power not on the colour of their rosettes but by the merits of their ideas, intentions and actions.

Well, the actions of this Prime Minister, and those found in the Sue Gray report to have taken grotesque liberties, abusing their positions of privilege, at a moment of collective national sacrifice and bereavement is precisely that which Sue Gray calls it: an abject failure of leadership and judgement.

But, of course, as our late friend and colleague Tom Richmond told me ... we already knew that he lacks those qualities. The question now is: do the Tory MPs who represent the good, honest people of this country lack those qualities, too? We are about to find out.